Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi

Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi (1776 – 8 June 1837), also known as Laminu, was an Islamic scholar and teacher and a religious, military and political leader who saved the Kanem–Bornu Empire during the jihads of the early nineteenth century (Wikipedia). According to the Library of Congress country study, when the Sokoto jihad reached Borno its mai was overthrown and the capital, Birni Gazargamu, destroyed, but al-Kanemi organised a strong resistance that forced the jihadists to retreat west and south.

Wikipedia records that the mai, Dunama IX Lefiami, rewarded him with unprecedented power, which allowed al-Kanemi to become the effective ruler of the empire; he took the title shehu ("sheikh") and made Kukawa his seat.

Al-Kanemi was born in Murzuk in 1776. His father was a Kanembu Islamic teacher from near Mao in Kanem, and his mother the daughter of an Arab trader. He learned the Quran in Murzuk and studied under scholars elsewhere, including Tripoli. In the 1790s he went on pilgrimage to Mecca with his father, who died in Medina, and stayed in the Middle East for about a decade to continue his studies. On his way home he settled at Ngala, where he gathered many students and married a daughter of its ruler (Wikipedia). While he was in Ngala the Sokoto jihad, launched in Hausaland in 1804, reached Bornu by 1807; Mai Ahmad wrote to Usman dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello asking the cause of the attacks, and in 1808 the Fulani captured the capital, Ngazargamu, forcing the mai to flee (Wikipedia).

His family replaced the centuries-old Sayfawa dynasty (country study); under his son Umar the mais were deposed and the al-Kanemi line became Borno's monarchs in name as well as in fact (Wikipedia).